The Toronto Maple Leafs have acquired veteran center Riley Nash from the Columbus Blue Jackets in exchange for a conditional seventh-round pick in 2022.
Nash, 31, is expected to miss the next 4-6 weeks with a knee injury. The pick will become a sixth-round selection if Nash plays in at least 25% of Toronto’s playoff games this season.
TRADE: We’ve acquired forward Riley Nash from Columbus in exchange for a conditional seventh-round selection in 2022. #LeafsForever
Details » https://t.co/IMZ9IimxhL pic.twitter.com/vEFKLdGn4x
— Toronto Maple Leafs (@MapleLeafs) April 9, 2021
Many Leafs fans will be familiar with Nash, as he’s helped knock out the Leafs in two of the past three seasons — once for Boston in the 2018 Stanley Cup Playoffs and again for Columbus in last year’s play-in series. While he’s never been known for his offensive game, he’s consistently stood out defensively throughout his career. He’s often trusted with a penalty-killing role, and he will give the team another right-handed faceoff option who brings some size (6’2, 190) and veteran guile the bottom-six.
Nash is essentially a fast-forward button. His team does not tend to generate much offense when he’s on the ice, but his defensive impacts are consistently off the charts (Source: Evolving Hockey):
With Patrice Bergeron out injured in 2017-18, Nash — already producing well in the Bruins’ bottom six — stepped in on the Bruins top line for a spell in February-March of 2018, and it helped vault him to a career year offensively with 15 goals and 41 points by year’s end, earning him his current $2.75 million AAV contract. Since then, playing on a lower-scoring Jackets team in limited minutes (11-12 minutes per game, with about a minute per game on the penalty kill), Nash has posted seasons of just 12 and 14 points in his past two years.
Nash will be an unrestricted free agent this offseason, so this move is a pure rental. His $2.75 million cap hit will almost surely be placed on the Long Term Injury Reserve (LTIR), and it seems rather unlikely that he will play at all in the regular season. Since there’s no cap in the playoffs, Nash could then enter the roster as a depth center.
The team’s center depth took a hit with the loss of Travis Boyd via waivers to Vancouver back in late March. The team is currently using Alexander Kerfoot and Pierre Engvall up the middle, and they seem to prefer to use both Jason Spezza and Joe Thornton on the wing. It wouldn’t be a shock if Nash didn’t feature regularly in the playoff lineup, but at the very least, he certainly adds depth at an important position.
CapFriendly has Brandon Pridham’s cap angle to this move laid out nicely below:
Despite being on IR in Columbus, Toronto still had to fit Nash under the cap before placing him on IR/LTIR.
Our assumption is the #Leafs made a recall, got close to the ceiling, placed Andersen, acquired Nash, then placed Nash on LTIR.
But we're working on confirming all that.
— CapFriendly (@CapFriendly) April 9, 2021
Just to be clear, the Leafs could not have made the Nash trade without Andersen on LTIR. That means they cannot activate Fred from LTIR, without removing $1.35m from the roster (or waiting for playoffs). Losing accrued space makes it even tougher, but that's a long explanation pic.twitter.com/59UH4B1L8q
— Earl Schwartz (@EarlSchwartz27) April 9, 2021
The #LeafsForever acquired 31 y/o C Riley Nash ($2.75M then UFA) for cond '22 7th.#Leafs place Nash & Andersen on LTIR, allowing them to exceed cap by $7.5M, leaving them $5.8M more annual cap hit that can be added. This reduces by $5M w/ Andersen back.https://t.co/hB3guKRv0K pic.twitter.com/L8QZuVx9Iv
— PuckPedia (@PuckPedia) April 9, 2021
In essence, the Leafs have acquired a shutdown 4C they can factor into their playoff lineup — when there is no cap — at the price of a sixth/seventh-round pick, with the flexibility of LTI relief now in use. This shouldn’t prevent the Leafs from making additional moves before Monday at 3 p.m. EST.
